Attending the ACRL/NY symposium and listening to the various talks on topics related to the theme “Values in Context: Praxis in the Everyday” was an invaluable experience for me as an early-career librarian in New York. It was wonderful learning about how the values of stewardship, service, intellectual freedom, rationalism, literacy and learning, equity of access, privacy, and democracy manifest in the work done by librarians across the state.
For instance, the presentation “Finding Your Purpose: Leading Workshops on Justice-Oriented Scholarship” by Claudia Berger from Sarah Lawrence College and Pratt Institute explored her work using Hannah Alpert-Abrams’ workbook “Finding Your Purpose” in digital humanities classrooms to help students students identify their own ethics and values that could inform their research. The lightening talk “On Display: Community Engagement, Counter-Stories, and Diversity Audits through Curating Reference Exhibits” highlighted Fordham University’s Tierney Gleason’s efforts to connect students to the communities of the Bronx, where the university is located, by highlighting library collections by and about those communities. Hunter College’s Samantha Slattery and Gina Levitan’s lightening talk “What’s Information Literacy without a little Civic Engagement? Using NYC Open Data in an Information Literacy Course” similarly highlighted their work connecting students to information about their communities, that could inform their understanding of and participation in democracy.
I left the symposium feeling inspired and motivated to conduct my own work in a way that places the aforementioned values at the center, much like my colleagues who shared their experiences doing the same. I am glad to have been offered the scholarship to attend the symposium and hope to one day present my own work at a future ACRL/NY symposium.